[11], 458, [1] pages ; 24 cm

Jane Jacobs critiques the comprehensive modernist approach to urban planning after 1945. By the 1950s, various American cities were pursuing ambitious urban renewal policies, influenced by Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier's concept of the "Radiant City." Jacobs sees this being utterly at odds with urban realities, and leading to the destruction of the city as a living community. This futurist vision insisted on the absolute segregation of the city's different activities into separate zones, linked (though also physically isolated) by super-highways set in wide parkland landscaping. The colossal physical destruction that was necessary to implement this vision tore apart the traditional multi-activity street and densely populated neighborhood that Jacobs avers is the bedrock of urban living

Includes index

Peculiar nature of cities: Uses of sidewalks, safety; Uses of sidewalks, contact; Uses of sidewalks, assimilating children; Uses of neighborhood parks; Uses of city neighborhoods -- Conditions for city diversity: Generators of diversity; Need for mixed primary uses; Need for small blocks; Need for aged buildings; Need for concentration; Some myths about diversity -- Forces of decline and regeneration: Self-destruction of diversity; curse of border vacuums; Unslumming and slumming; Gradual money and cataclysmic money -- Different tactics: Subsidizing dwellings; Erosion of cities or attrition of automobiles; Visual order, its limitations and possibilities; Salvaging projects; Governing and planning districts; Kind of problem a city is

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